It will be appreciated that time is of the essence in the delivery of emergency services. As is well known, with a severed artery an individual can die within eight minutes. Moreover, there is a so-called “golden hour” in which if appropriate medical procedures are not administered, the likelihood of survival is substantially diminished.
In the past, a limited amount of medical history has been carried on bracelets worn by a stricken individual which at least instructs the EMTs or other emergency care professionals as to any allergic reactions that the individual may have. It can also alert to life threatening diseases such as AIDS so as to protect emergency personnel.
However, complete patient records have so far been unavailable to the emergency medical practitioner at the scene or at the point at which emergency help is administered. As a result, emergency medical personnel are at a great disadvantage when treating an individual in extremis.
There is therefore an urgent need to provide patient histories on the spot to assist medical providers in order to save lives or better render emergency assistance.
Such assistance would desirably be with the patient's consent, although ability to rapidly deliver patient records might take precedence over obtaining consent. Consent may however, play an important role.
As is usual, much of the patient's medical history is kept as a private record by his or her physician, by his or her hospital, or by his or her insurance company. Privacy issues surrounding the release of this information have in general resulted in large and unacceptable delays in getting this information to the primary healthcare provider. The results have been that people in emergency situations are denied the benefits of providing up-to-date information when trying to obtain treatment. Thus not only is patient history unavailable, such information when it becomes available, is available much later in the process.
Thus, delays in disseminating patient information are the result of privacy concerns, and for this reason patient information is not routinely transmitted anywhere outside a hospital environment, much less over the Internet. Moreover, present systems deny the patient the ability to consent to the transfer of the records to the appropriate healthcare provider under any circumstances. For this reason the individual has no choice in the matter and if unconscious is unable to give such consent in cases of emergency.